216 Social Media and Internet Statistics (September 2012)

All the best plans can go astray sometimes and my pledge to post a new social media stats article every month definitely falls into the straying category. In my defense I haven’t really been lazy, I’ve just been neglectful – which (at least in my mind) is way more justified. It probably may come as a surprise to some of you that I actually have a life outside this blog (which, let’s not forget, I do not get PAID to write) – it may be a sad, lonely, cat-obsessed existence but it is an existence where I do have to do other shit that actually pays the bills… which with my recent online shopping obsession, car purchase and overseas holidays seem to be piling up. Anyway I don’t have to justify myself to you. Yeah, that’s right.

Moving along find below the latest statistics update for you, after the no less than 10 trillion billion requests I’ve gotten in the past couple of months. Also after the 34 million complaints about my lazy referencing style in past articles I’ve tried to be a bit better with this in this article. Basically if you want the source for a certain statistic it should be (should being operative word) the next hyperlink you see after the stat – I’ve only included the reference on the last stat point of each reference. I suspect that probably made no sense whatsoever but just figure it out. Seriously, I can’t (or won’t?) do everything.

Oh and one more thing. I don’t make up any of these statistics myself. I get them from all those other, much more reputable sources. So if some of them don’t make sense or they conflict with each other or they are utterly ridiculously wrong it’s not my fault. It’s their fault. So that’s my disclaimer.

In an analysis of more than 60 Facebook marketing campaigns, 49 percent reported areturn on investment of more than five times, while 70 percent had a return on investment greater than three times. (source: AllFacebook)

Global Market

Unique Audience

Active Reach

Brazil

38,138,000

76.7%

Italy

21,270,000

70.5%

Spain

15,628,000

67.0%

France

28,335,000

66.9%

United Kingdom

25,737,000

63.9%

Germany

24,508,000

54.6%

Japan

14,877,000

24.4%

Switzerland*

1,985,000

50.3%

New Zealand**

2,672,000

79.8%

Taiwan**

11,068,000

77.9%

United States**

152,763,000

69.6%

Australia**

11,010,000

68.4%

Read as: 38.1 million Brazilians visited Facebook during March 2012, about 76.7% of those who were active online that month from Home/Work computers in the market.
* Online measurement in Switzerland is from Home computers only.
** New Zealand, Taiwan, the U.S., and Australia use Hybrid measurement, which includes sources in addition to home/work computers.
Source: Nielsen

In any given week, less than 0.5% of Facebook fans engage with the brand they are fans of. (Source: Marketing Science)

20% of Facebook users have purchased something because of ads or comments they saw there. (Source: Ipsos)

We are finding that 50 percent of smartphones are actually connecting to Facebook every hour of every day. (Source: AllFacebook)

Facebook has 232 million users in Europe, 222 million in North America, and 219 million users Asia. (Source: AllTwitter)

The 18-29 demographic is most represented on Twitter, at 29% of user base, ahead of those aged 30-49 (14%) and 50-64 (9%)

14% of online men use Twitter vs 15% of online women (source: AllTwitter)

Roughly 9% of US adult Internet users are on Twitte

The average Twitter user has 27 followers

25% of Twitter accounts have no followers

40% of Twitter accounts have never sent a single tweet

Only 18% of Twitter users tweet once or more a day

? of Twitter users are 25-34 years old

More than half of active Twitter users follow companies, brands or products on social networks

79% of US Twitter users are more like to recommend brands they follow

67% of US Twitter users are more likely to buy from brands they follow

57% of all companies that use social media for business use Twitter (Hubspot)

Mobile/Smartphone statistics

See what I did here? IT'S NOT EVEN AN IPHONE IMAGE! Turns out, other smartphones exist. I have no idea what this is, but it looks a lot like an iPhone except it's not one. That's all I have to say about that.

Mobile now accounts for 10% of internet usage worldwide (this has more than doubled over last 18months) (The Next Web)

1.08 of the world’s 4 billion mobile phones are smartphones

Apple and Android represent more than 75% of the smartphone market

7.96% of all web traffic in the U.S. is mobile traffic. That number skyrockets to 14.85% in Africa, and 17.84% in Asia — up 192.5% since 2010

29% of mobile users are open to scanning a mobile tag to get coupons

39% of instances where a consumer walks out of a store without buying were influenced by smartphones

91% of mobile internet access is for social activities, versus just 79% on desktops (Source: Hubspot)

Watching video on computers has become as common as watching video on television among online consumers

Mobile video is prominent in Asia-Pacific and Middle East/Africa where 74% and 72% of online consumers respectively watch video on mobile at least once a month (and at almost 40% say they do at least once a day) (source: Nielsen)

38% of North Americans watch mobile video once a month

90% of people move between devices to accomplish a goal.

38% of our daily media interactions are on smartphones

On average, we spend 4.4 hours of our leisure time in front of screens each day.

18 different countries across Asia, including Australia, China, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, South Korea and Thailand discovered that Facebook (88.8 %), Twitter (66.4%) and YouTube (62.4%) were the social platforms of choice amongst all respondents.

LinkedIn (40%) finished fourth, ahead of blogs (39.2%) and Pinterest (20.8%), with Google+ being used by just 12.8% of Asian corporate marketers.(Source: AllTwitter)

94% of corporates use social media and 85% say it’s given their business more exposure

74% of brand marketers saw an increase in website traffic after investing just 6 hours per week on social media

25% of Twitter users connect with a brand on the platform (over one third of these do so for discounts and promotions)

Over 25% of Twitter users would consider contacting a business via the platform

Over half of social networking users who share business-related content do so on Twitter (source: AllTwitter)

39% of companies do not track their social media responses at all, and 55% ignore all customer feedback on Twitter and Facebook, largely because they have no process in place to respond. (Source: AllTwitter)

So there you have it. Over 200 social media and Internet statistics just for you. You are so totally having a social media statistic orgasm right now.

When will I post another update? Let’s just say I wouldn’t hold your breath. But it WILL happen. It won’t happen overnight. But it seriously will happen. Just not for awhile. Got any other social media stats I’ve missed? Share them below. Or don’t. What the f*^% do I care.

Community Answers

Wow. Cara, this is one of the most useful posts I’ve run across, in a long time! Stats like these allow marketers and consultants to develop new, effective, digital strategies for their clients. thanks so much for all the hard work. Keep on rocking!

I´ll be in the National Congress of Tourism tomorrow as speaker and I´ll show your post to all the audience with a QR Code to let them to visit your site.

Post a warm hug for Costa Rica and they will love you forever!

Thanks for this valuable post.

I will talk about tips to make technology to work for and not against companies. If you can find and post something specially for me, I´ll show your site live during the congress and all the local press will be present.

Bwahahaha, I just had to comment. Not because of the insightful and hard work that has gone into sourcing a ginormous amount of statistical data, but because of the hilarious image captions. Good work!

Cara, thanks for compiling such an extensive and interesting listing of facts and figures. This is very useful for those of us who are working with business clients on such questions as should they engage online, if yes, then where, and when. Wonderful work. Thanks again.

with all those beliefs, as aspirations of aspirants and users of social medias, theres some great possiblities for discovery and revelations about futures possible, thing is to get it, and get it to hang together coherently as jobs for futures, in and from the current cicumstances extended.

Technology will offer self-expressing instruments that will transform much of what we consume into an outright entertainment. Information that is not transformed into a kind of entertainment won’t get much attention. scn.sap.com.. thanks.

Very very interesting information here, esp about mobile use. It cements what i have been telling my clients about getting mobile versions of their sites going because of the huge increase in portable use of the Web. Seems to me that Social Media drives this mobile push. I can see a future with very few desktops. Thanks for this Cara!

This blog is nice and amazing. I really like your post! It’s also nice to see someone who does a lot of research and has a great knack for writing, which is pretty rare from bloggers these days.
Thanks!

There are some negative consequences from social media. But I cannot agree with the people that say we should quit it. It is a very important tool both for social endeavors and business.
To be specific on the business side – it is a great way to monitor the publics, to have a better grasp on the opinion of you customers.
On the more human side, social media has helped a lot in charity – in fund raisers and others, and many people are thankful for that. In my opinion the benefits far exceed the down sides.

Oh my goodness gracious me! I was eating and reading the whole article at the same time, and I will say that the data that you have published, it’s is awesome. I will also keep my focus on brasil, because that is the fastest growing country after China and India!

I have shared this article with my online network – concise, a myth buster & reality call about all the hype that surounds numbers on social media. Is it a key tool for Business/personal positioning? Yes. Is it (numbers) “as good as it sounds”? a mix of yes and no.

Hello, Neat post. There is a problem together with your website in internet explorer, would check this? IE nonetheless is the marketplace leader and a good portion of folks will miss your fantastic writing due to this problem.

Hey Cara,
I love your post (especially your introduction and Image captions), and obviously the statistics. This information is very useful for internet marketers as it can help them better understand the importance of social media, and also to average internet users because it offers insights about different S.M. platforms.

“On average, we spend 4.4 hours of our leisure time in front of screens each day.”
Well that’s a bummer.

The reference are not very precise and in some cases even completely non sense, for example:
In an analysis of more than 60 Facebook marketing campaigns, 49 percent reported a return on investment of more than five times, while 70 percent had a return on investment greater than three times????? are we talking about the 119% of campaigns?

In this case they may have included the 49% in the 70% as well, as those who reported an ROI of more than five times would also have reported an ROI of more than three times. Does that make sense? I agree it is confusing though!

Thanks for a very interesting web site. Where else could I get that kind of info written in such an ideal approach? I have a undertaking that I’m just now working on, and I’ve been at the look out for such information.

Mobile shopping has also gained popularity because of new innovative handsets showing new features like touchscreen, digital music, digital camera, wi-fi
connectivity and so on. Then online shopping network has made mobile shopping even
better. One can choose from a wide range of products sitting at home by just surfing the internet. It gives the customer the liberty to choose the latest
version of exclusive brands.

I just stop and watch this website and i found out that this is very nice and interesting. I love to read blogs and articles i already bookmark this webpage. I’m looking forward to read more and I’ll be back for more updates .

Hi Cara !
Thank you so much for posting this. I am a high school senior taking an English course at a JC near my house, and this post was probably the most useful source I found for my paper! I really appreciate it.

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About me + this blog

Hi there, my name is Cara Pring, welcome to The Social Skinny, a website dedicated to social media and website optimization strategy. If you want simple, jargon-free tips and updates, you've come to the right place! Outside the geeky expert stuff I'm a crazy cat lady from Sydney - and no, that is not me in the header (everyone asks). You can find out more about me in the About page or you can connect with me on Twitter, FB, LinkedIn & G+. Thanks for stopping by :)
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